BeFriending Creation

Quarterly newsletter of Quaker Earthcare Witness

Volume 30, Number 5

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Fall 2017

“This is the most exciting moment in human history,” proclaimed Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, a minister, activist, and artist at the Root Skills Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire this December. She repeated the statement as a few hundred New Englanders and myself looked at her doubtfully: “This is the most exciting moment in human history.” She then offered her four reasons:

Most people think something is wrong.

We are starved for connection and community.

Our leaders and institutions are failing us.

We are willing to take risks more than ever before.

Does this ring true for you? It certainly did for me. So many of my peers agree that something is deeply wrong in our society, even if we differ politically. This belief unites us, along with the sense that our future will not look brighter.

Yet, Rev. White-Hammond points out, we are still waiting for someone else to tell us what to do. We are waiting for someone to save us, waiting to find that person who will lead us. We cannot wait.

We must be able to tell our grandkids that now is the moment when it all shifted. This is when we really began to believe in the “power of human goodness,” recognize our own ability to lead, and call upon God.

I’m excited to share this issue of BeFriending Creation because it echoes these truths by lifting up the voices of Friends across the country who are practicing faith in action. This issue highlights founder Marshall Massey’s words that still ring true 30 years later: the “environmental crisis cannot be solved without our organizational help…that we are called by the Light within us, by the teachings and example of Jesus, and by the writings and examples of our Quaker predecessors, to work for the solution to these crisis, just as we are called to work for an end to war, cruelty, and hatred.”